Sifting through my folder tonight, I see that Parent Night is coming soon. Traditionally, students go to Parent Night all dressed up and afterwards they find a hangout. Last year it was so fun. I got a manicure, had my hair straightened, and wore a little red dress. While my parents did the boring task of talking to my teachers, I gossiped and texted. When the conferences were over, my friends and I went to a Chinese buffet, which cut into my curfew, but Dad kindly didn’t rip into me when I came home at midnight.

I give the flyer to my parents, hoping that they’ll go again this year even though they embarrass me. I’m at the age when everything they say or do irks me. Dad clipped his nails in the bathroom this morning and I could hear the snip-snip of shorn fingernails through the door. How uncouth. And a week ago, the living room curtains were wide open and some boy from school stood on the sidewalk watching my mom do contortions to an exercise video. They don’t see that their behavior is uncool.

Sometimes I feel that I don’t fit in. Years ago, during a sleepover at a friend’s house, some girl I barely knew asked questions about my ethnicity. I was wearing pink nail polish and she asked me, “Your parents allow you to wear nail polish?” As if Muslim girls can’t wear something harmless like nail polish. Those ignorant comments only come once in a while, because my real friends know that I do fit in. People who know very little about me think my mom will come to school wearing a veil or sari, and they’re wowed by how hot she is (the only time her hotness makes me look good). Or they think Dad will have a long terrorist beard and bland clothes, but he always comes to school in a suit, looking all suave and charming. I don’t mind if my classmates see my parents, but it’s best that they don’t. Like most people my age, I pretend that my home life and my school life are on different planes of existence.

“Dad, are you going to Parent Night?” I ask during our nightly snack. It’s late, and we eat as much as possible during the night hours.

He neatly rips the meat off a chicken bone with his precise teeth. As a dentist, he sees his teeth as fine instruments, like meat cleavers to a butcher or cuticle scissors for a manicurist. “Yes,” he says.

Mom walks in, wearing her usual tank top and shorts—which she wears all day long, unlike normal moms who wear sweatsuits, housedresses, and robes. She perks up her ears when she hears my question. “Of course we’re going, Almira,” she says.

“Woo hoo! Can you just drop me off, though? I get good grades. You don’t need to stick with me or talk to all my teachers. I just want to go to dinner with my friends after the meetings.”

“We want to see all your teachers.”

“Their pictures are on the school website!”

“Stop whining, Almira,” Dad says.

I pout, feeling put out, as if my emotions don’t matter. I guess I’ll just suffer through things the way I normally do.

“My father called today,” Dad says.

“Yeah,” I mumble through a mouthful of chicken.

“He’s going to give you driving lessons starting this weekend.”

My jaw would be dropping, but I’m still chewing. A few months ago I had an argument with my parents about how I’d be sixteen soon and that I wanted my driver’s license. They had taken me seriously, so Dad gave me some lessons. Driving is terrifying. And now with Grandpa as a teacher! In his tanklike car. Will I live to experience my sixteenth birthday?

“Isn’t it best that you continue to teach her?” Mom says.

Thank you, Mom, I think. You overexercise and sing in a crummy voice, but thank you for defending me.

“My father insists,” Dad says. “Almira has had a learner’s permit for nearly a year, and I don’t have time to finish teaching her.”

“Dad, with six lessons already, I know how to drive,” I say. “But I’m out of practice.”

“I don’t have time to give you more lessons,” Dad says.

“He’s a really bad driver,” Mom says.

“He’s just old, that’s all. His faculties are with him.”

“What faculties are those?” Mom asks.

Dad presses his lips together, and I don’t want to be around during one of their fights. I hope to never have in-laws. I want a drop-dead-gorgeous husband who’s extremely wealthy and has parents who live across the world in some exotic country. I’d only have to see my in-laws during holidays, and maybe not even then because they’d live in the middle of a jungle and I could always use the excuse that I didn’t get immunized for my trip or that the water makes me sick. But then they could visit me. I’ll worry about that when I get older, but in the present I know that Mom and Grandpa don’t like each other.

I go to my room. Through my door I can hear Mom and Dad hissing at each other, refusing to raise their voices so that they won’t emotionally scar me. I call Lisa’s home phone to bounce my worries off her (her cell is always low on minutes). Her line is busy, which means that she’s online. She has dial-up, which is prehistoric. That’s like using VHS when there’s DVD and TiVo.

My DSL box blinks at me when I get on the Internet to use Instant Messenger. Lisa is on her computer, as I predicted. I start typing.

AlmiraRules: hey

GorgeLisa: hi

AlmiraRules: my parents are definitely going to parent night, so i hope we’ll see each other there

GorgeLisa: my parents are coming too. It’s until 8. so late

AlmiraRules: No! that means I have to fast longer, past the sun setting!!!!

GorgeLisa: at least u get to eat. a real fast means no food at all.

AlmiraRules: it’s not easy

GorgeLisa: i know. do you think peter will be at parent night

AlmiraRules: i hope so, I want to see him there

GorgeLisa: what do you mean?

AlmiraRules: i mean i know you like him, so of course i want him to be there for you

GorgeLisa: thanks, because he’s important to me

AlmiraRules: ok, anyway grandpa is going to give me driving lessons since I haven’t had a lesson in a while, then my learner’s permit can become a license when i turn 16

GorgeLisa: no, don’t let him, he’s practically blind

AlmiraRules: say nice things about me at my funeral

GorgeLisa: i’m sure you’ll live. his car will flatten anything that you hit.

AlmiraRules: yeah, right

GorgeLisa: ur parents are really going to let you drive with him?

AlmiraRules: yeah, they care about my welfare and whether or not I have a pulse. just watch my accident on the evening news. your best friend will be famous.

GorgeLisa: don’t be so pessimistic. anyway, isn’t Peter a q-t? i hope he likes me

AlmiraRules: yeah

GorgeLisa: I need help with my social studies homework

AlmiraRules: the newspaper research assignment

GorgeLisa: where is the boston chronicle published?

AlmiraRules: where do u think?

GorgeLisa: don’t know

AlmiraRules: BOSTON

GorgeLisa: thanks, you’re the bestest

AlmiraRules: night

GorgeLisa: bye

Lisa and I are in the same honors classes, but sometimes she acts like she can’t think properly. She also likes Peter, just when I start to think that I like him, too. I eat a slice of cake before going to bed. I’ll wake up extremely early to have breakfast with my parents, to fill up before the daylight hours of starvation.

I’ll feel hungry in other ways, too. Like how can I get Peter to notice me? How can I get my parents to lay off me? How can I get Grandpa to drop the idea of giving me driving lessons? I want so much, but don’t know how to get things going my way. I stare at my computer. I have a Jake Gyllenhaal desktop, and it transitions to a Robert Pattinson screensaver. I kiss my fingers and then place them on my screen. Maybe I’ll take a picture of Peter with my cell phone so that I can have a new desktop image to adore. Grandpa doesn’t know squat about technology, so he never checks my computer. He doesn’t want me to know anything about boys, yet I have a whole PC file of hunks that he doesn’t know how to get his hands on. And I want to add Peter to the collection.

• • •

My family is really strict about banning boys from my life. A boy, who was nothing more than a friend, once walked home with Lisa and me. Dad happened to drive by while we were walking, and when I got home he gave me the third degree. Who was that boy? Why was he with me? How long have I known him? Was he interested in me? Did he inappropriately touch me? Who were his parents? Did he ask me out? And Grandpa is always ripping posters off my wall. He tore off Brandon Flowers because he thought he was a classmate I had fallen in love with. I can only wish that Brandon went to my school.

They act like boys are poison. I suppose that some of them are toxic. For example, Kevin Federline ruined Britney Spears. She’ll never return to her former glory after knowing him. So some boys can destroy girls, I’m well aware of that, but others are okay. Sometimes I feel weird thinking about boys, because it seems wrong for a Muslim girl to be lusting after them. But isn’t that what typical teenage girls do? Am I allowed to be typical?

Roberto Aguilar once asked me out, in the first month of ninth grade, but I declined. He was funny and sweet, but he had small, crooked corn-teeth that bothered me (also, what would Dad think?) and a cast on his foot from a football accident. His dry, hairy, grotesque toes peeked out from the end of his cast. I regret turning him down, because now he wears clear braces and no longer has the cast. His feet also improved, because I saw him in flip-flops at the mall the other day and his toes looked normal. He’s totally hot, and I blew the beginnings of a relationship by being shallow. I wonder what a relationship with him would be like. Am I supposed to sneak around with him, or tell my parents that he’s a friend? I don’t think my parents will even accept me having a male friend.

Another guy I sort of fell in love with was Buff12, who IM’ed me one day (by accident, he said; my ID was similar to his friend’s) and we emailed each other for a month. Then he became honest and said that instead of being an eighteen-year-old soccer player from Brazil with a buff body, he was really an unemployed thirty-year-old actor who was out of shape. Pedo alert. I put him on my ignore list and didn’t think of him again.

I want a boyfriend. I’m ready for one, even if my family isn’t. I’m determined to have one. I close my eyes and think about all the boys at school until my mind settles on Peter. Mmmmmmmmmm.

My stomach roars like a lion, which halts my romantic thoughts. It now feels like my belly is separate from the rest of me, like I have a dog inside of me that needs to be walked, fed, and bathed. Down, boy. I eat breakfast to silence the beast.

I walk to school, because I don’t feel like listening to my mom sing again. Lisa walks alongside me. She’s wearing a pink sweater-dress that clings to her skinny body. Her arms are slender, with knobby elbows. I look at my own arms, which are on the plump side. Mom assures me that bracelets look good on me because of the fat on my arms, as if I’m supposed to take that as a compliment. No, you’re not a ravishing beauty, but you can always be a hand model. Wow.

At least I’m losing weight. I pat my stomach, which is less poochy than normal. My pants are even sagging on me. I adjust my glasses. I have contact lenses, which I really want to wear everyday, but they make my eyes red and itchy. I don’t have too many pimples, so my skin is good. I wonder if I could ever be considered hot, but the idea seems laughable to me.

We stand by the front entrance and try to spot Peter. I’m sweeping my eyes over the crowd, as is Lisa. Maybe that explains the way she’s dressed. She even wears makeup, which she usually doesn’t have on, and she applied it wrong. Two thick stripes of pink blush look out of place on her round cheeks.

While we’re on the lookout for Peter, a silver monolith comes into view. It’s gigantic. The sun shines on the massive vehicle as it moves toward us. Dewdrops glint off of it like diamonds. It’s a Hummer. I’ve seen many of them, but it’s still odd to see such huge vehicles on the street. Why does anyone need such a huge car? Dad says that it’s to show off. I’d be afraid to drive one of them. I’m still afraid to drive any sort of car.

The Hummer stops in front of us. My eyes try to penetrate the tinted windows, but all I see is a reflection of me and my classmates. The door opens and I see one tan leg, followed by another. A beautiful face follows, and then a tiny waist emerges as the girl unfolds herself out of the vehicle. Boys whistle. I see Peter stop in his tracks to stare. Lisa tenses up next to me, her muscles taut. I wonder who this person is, with her silky brown hair, flawless skin, and a modelesque physique.

The girl smirks, looking coyly at her admirers.

“Who is that?” Lisa asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “She must be new.”

The girl has long, thick, Catherine-Zeta-Jones-type hair and bottomless brown eyes. We watch her go inside the building, and we see her again in first-period English. Our teacher, Ms. Odige, introduces her. “This is Shakira Malik. Shakira, tell everyone a little about yourself.”

Shakira stands up, her beige dress flowing around her toned legs. “I’m Shakira, and I just moved down here from Orlando,” she says. Her voice is sexy and husky, a grown woman’s voice.

Malik? I wonder if she’s Middle Eastern. I hope she is, because then I won’t be the only Muslim in the school. It isn’t like I’m lonely or anything, but to know someone else who shares my culture seems comfortable to me, the same way many of my classmates speak Spanish to each other all the time. I want to be around someone who shares that with me. I look at her short dress and become skeptical on her possible Muslimness. Muslim girls aren’t supposed to dress like that (even though many Muslims wouldn’t like the way I dress). Maybe Malik is Eastern European. But then she has that first name, Shakira, which is definitely Arabic. It’s the coolest name, the same as one of my favorite pop singers.

Shakira barely pays attention to anything going on in class. While the teacher talks, she continues to give coy looks to boys. Mike winks at her and she grins at him over her shoulder. Luis can’t pry his eyes off of her. Shakira’s eyes skim his athletic body in a predatory way.

There are grumblings from girls about her. Girls can be petty and vicious when it comes to competing with each other on looks and attention. Surprisingly, the pretty, popular girls don’t seem to take to her, even though Shakira seems to be their type. “What a man-eater,” Lisa whispers in my ear.

I can’t agree more, but I want to know more about her. Where are her parents from, and is she fasting like I am? I see her hand in an assignment to Ms. Odige, and she has large, bubbly handwriting. She also puts hearts above her i’s. Even her penmanship is awesome. I look at my sloppy handwriting. Sometimes I can’t read what I’ve written down. Some people are just perfect, and I’m not one of them. There is this whole secret club of perfect, cool people. I’m in high school, so I can tell. There are the higher ups, the riffraff, and the people in the middle. I’m considered a middleton, which isn’t horrible, but of course I wonder what it feels like to be on top.